By Sarah Weaver of The Hillsdale Collegian - September 23, 2021
“I’ll die on this hill. I don’t care if they strip us of everything.”
This is how Hillsdale Mayor Adam Stockford responded to President Joe Biden’s mandate that employers with at least 100 workers require their employees to either take the COVID-19 vaccine, or submit to weekly COVID tests.
Stockford said he thinks the government may hold Hillsdale’s Act 51 money from the city if they do not comply with the mandate. Act 51 funds are a combination of federal and state funds used for infrastructure projects such as road repairs and maintenance. According to the Michigan Municipal League, “Public Act 51 of 1951 created the Michigan Transportation Fund, and it is the main road funding source for most cities and villages.”
Stockford took to Facebook shortly after Biden announced the mandate on Sept. 9.
“I’m concerned the state of Michigan and the feds will inevitably withhold our Act 51 money and our revenue sharing if we don’t mandate vaccination for our city employees,” Stockford wrote. “If so, we will sue them and go without the funds.”
Stockford said the government uses local tax dollars to centralize power.
“Basically they take more from us every year and they give us a little bit back with strings attached. And that’s the way that they influence local politics,” he said.
But that money comes from the pockets of Hillsdale’s citizens, Stockford said, so if the federal government strips Hillsdale of the funds, the town will simply withhold funds from the government in return.
“At the end of the day, 90% of Americans don’t grasp the idea that that’s our money they’re sending back to us so they’re not doing us any favors,” he said. “So, if they don’t want to send us our money back, then we just won’t send them our money in the first place.”
This tactic — which Stockford referred to as “the atomic bomb ”— comes with a price the mayor says he is willing to pay.
“You have to draw a line in the sand at some point,” he said. “And forcing people to undergo medical procedures of any sort or to inject themselves with any sort of substance, that just seems like a hard ‘no.’”
Stockford said he is prepared to fight the mandate in court.
As of Monday, Hillsdale had 4,683 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 103 deaths from the disease, according to data from the Branch-Hillsdale-St. Joseph Community Health Agency. Hillsdale County has a current average of 25 cases per day.
Health Officer Rebecca Burns was not immediately available for comment regarding the health agency’s potential enforcement of a vaccine mandate.
Darren Wiseley, a local attorney advising Stockford, said neither Biden nor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can mandate the shot.
“The whole thing is laughably unconstitutional on its face,” Wiseley said.
Although Wiseley said he believes the court would be right to rule in Hillsdale’s favor, he’s not totally confident it would.
“Regarding the legal aspect, it’s hard because I can tell you what the law said, but then what the court’s going to do is going to be two different things,” Wiseley said. “It’s like the rule of law, whatever it was, has been thrown out the window.”
What the mandate will look like for businesses and federal workers in Hillsdale won’t become clear for quite some time, Wiseley said, perhaps not even during Biden’s term.
But like Stockford, Wiseley expressed hope in Hillsdale’s unique ability to fly under the radar on vaccine mandate enforcement.
“You can’t send the gestapo to every single business and check. Outside of that, how are you gonna really know who’s requiring the vaccine?” Wiseley said.
Wiseley said he was doubtful the local government would enforce a vaccine mandate.
“You can say, until the cows come home, ‘you have to do this, you have to do that,’” Wiseley said, “But if there’s no real enforcement then it doesn’t mean anything.”
Wiseley said he agrees with Stockford’s tactic of withholding funds from the federal government if they withhold Hillsdale’s Act 51 money.
“I think Adam is correct in that outside of getting him and the council to sort of say, ‘Hey, we’re not sending your money,’” Wiseley said, “I don’t think you win that in a court.”
Another way for some businesses to get around the mandate legally, Wiseley said, would be to break up into several separate businesses, thus skirting the 100-employee requirement.
“I know some smaller regional restaurant chains did that to get around Obamacare,” he said.
Adam Carrington, associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College who teaches courses on constitutional law, said that Occupational Safety and Health Administration policy, as it currently stands, could be easily used to justify a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
“The language is extremely broad,” Carrington said.
Legally challenging the mandate in general would be tough, given OSHA’s broad discretion in regard to mandating certain health and safety standards for businesses engaging in interstate commerce, Carrington said.
The best way to challenge the mandate would be to emphasize the fact that it was not made by representatives of the people, according to Carrington.
“If anyone is going to make this decision, it should be the people’s representatives rather than the agency,” Carrington said. “Attack who made it, not its substance.”
Carrington noted the Supreme Court could argue against these mandates by upholding the nondelegation doctrine, which holds that Congress cannot delegate its legislative powers to another entity.
“Congress had a chance to mandate this in the past but didn’t. That might be another thing a judge could take into account. If they didn’t mandate it earlier, is it really that needed?” Carrington said.
But Stockford said the fallout from non-compliance with Biden’s mandate may not come in the form of legal action, since Hillsdale is uniquely suited to live without the assistance and oversight of the federal government.
“I really think we can draw a circle around this place. If you look at the makeup of Hillsdale and the topography and how we look agriculturally and the fact that we have the five rivers, we have everything we need here,” Stockford said. “I’m not talking doomsday predictions yet but this place could really be completely self-sufficient.”
Stockford said he believes small towns such as Hillsdale, which has a population of about 8,000, may be able to defy federal mandates with little to no notice from the federal government.
Stockford said he saw the advantage of a small, self-sufficient town like Hillsdale play out during the initial lockdown orders from Lansing and Washington last year.
“Basically if you just tell them, ‘No we’re not enforcing that,’ there’s not too much they can do about it,” Stockford said.
Stockford has faced numerous threats for his defiance both now and earlier in the pandemic. Nevertheless, Stockford said his defiance is still worth it.
“I did get some threats,” Stockford said. “I had some threats from the [Michigan] attorney general’s office to come down and remove me from office and stuff like that. I would have welcomed it! I told the attorney general’s office, ‘Do it! Please!’”
Stockford said his message to Washington and Lansing would be, “Read the Constitution and remember that our Founders envisioned local government as being the biggest government that has an impact on people’s everyday lives.”
If the pandemic taught us anything, Stockford said, it is that those who impose these mandates, whether from Lansing or Washington, often won’t follow through on their threats.
“You think about people like Mitch Spangler who wouldn’t shut his restaurant down,” Stockford said, referencing a restaurant owner in Jonesville who kept his business open during the lockdowns last year. “Or you think of somebody like the city of Hillsdale that wouldn’t stop having public meetings when they told us we had to go virtual. And the consequences? I mean, none of us are sitting in prison right now.”
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